# NYT Cooking's AI recipe editor made commenters furious. A WIRED tester found it mostly works

> The iOS beta rewrites recipes for swaps and diets, marks every change, and refuses ideas that break the dish. Commenters threatened to cancel; the editor says nobody is being replaced.

- URL: https://devisdead.ai/news/nyt-cooking-s-ai-recipe-editor-made-commenters-furious-a-wired-tester-found-it-m
- Published: 2026-11-08T23:16:09Z
- Author: DevIsDead Newsroom
- Section: AI vs Humans
- Tags: new york times, cooking, recipes, ai features
- Originally reported by WIRED (https://www.wired.com/story/nyt-cooking-new-ai-powered-recipe-modifier-is-pretty-good/).

Readers of New York Times Cooking did not ask for AI. When the Times announced an AI tool that modifies recipes on October 23, commenters revolted: 172 almost entirely angry comments in four days, cancellation threats, demands to know how to turn it off, until comments were closed. Then food writer Joe Ray actually cooked with it for [WIRED](https://www.wired.com/story/nyt-cooking-new-ai-powered-recipe-modifier-is-pretty-good/), and came away mostly impressed.

## How it works

In the iOS-only beta, a "customize this recipe" box sits above the ingredients. Tell it you have no loaf pan and it asks what pans you do have, then rewrites the banana bread. Swap pork for beef, or adapt for a diet, and every change shows up in red-orange text, with a toggle back to the original and a label saying the version was made with AI and not tested or endorsed by the recipe's creators. Ask for something absurd, like turning gochujang noodles into a cookie, and it redirects you to a real cookie recipe.

The model draws on the recipe itself, the Times' substitution guide, reader comments and then its own knowledge, in that order. Recipe editors wrote its original rules and evaluated the results. NYT Cooking general manager Camilla Velasquez says it should be a helper, not something you chat with.

## The test

Ray swapped boneless breasts for bone-in thighs in an Alison Roman chicken and dumplings recipe with over 6,000 ratings. The tool shortened the simmer time, since breast cooks faster, and added butter to the roux to make up for less rendered fat. Its one real miss: it told him to put the shredded breast back in the pot for another half hour, which made the meat noticeably less tender. He held most of it back.

## About the humans

Asked what this means for the roughly 60 people who make NYT Cooking, Velasquez said the section has been hiring more than ever and has no intention of publishing fewer recipes.

That's the version of kitchen AI that works: grounded in tested recipes, transparent about every edit, willing to say no. The readers' anger isn't wrong, though. It's about a brand built on human trust, and an AI edit carries none of the testing that earned it.

**[Scoreboard](/scoreboard) update:** Draw. The AI recipe editor mostly cooks fine, and the readers still wish it weren't there.

Stay undead.